Is there any consensus in what to do about the risk of the winter pony "The End is Beautiful"ing Velvet/Family?
Except delaying harm through wrongkeys?
well, we get a warning of the "curse is approaching" type, AND we can make 3 wrong keys in a turn (only once per summon period though).
Other than that... I think we'll
probably end up killing him, though it's not quite a sure thing yet.
One action.
Writing a forge manuscript is one action not multiple.
There's also the "read books", though that's admittedly to our benefit too (even if we might want to prioritize other things if possible), AND that's only fine for Forge, so for a single month. Every other Lore is actually a fair bit harder to bring to lvl 3 I think.
Basing ones move on your guess as to what a moth master is going to do...
Really that's what your basing your choices on, really?
More on topic, my point is that your choice is based on the goodwill we have with the Master hopefully preventing them from putting forth the effort to 'deal' with us. Mine is also based on the goodwill the Master has for us hopefully allowing them to cut us a little slack for our first failure (other council members have failed before). If you don't think that we have enough goodwill to pass one failure how do you think we have enough goodwill to get away with rebellion?
It's not like you're not making your own assumptions on the Master's future actions.
and, while other council members have failed, they all at least
tried.
Velvet's mission is
easy. VERY easy, really. All she has to do is write a few manuscripts, it LITERALLY only costs her time and has no chance of failure, so "failing" it shows we didn't even try.
And, again, goodwill is not a coin to trade away, and Bird was very explicit about Velvet only being confident about having one month of leeway, and no idea about the second.
MAYBE we can afford a second month. Maybe not. But if we go to the next meeting, the Master WILL ask why we failed, and we've been VERY careful not to outright lie to him... and I don't think we can manage to get out of that question easily.
and the point of the way we're betraying them is to not make it clear WHY we're betraying them.
I'm not trusting them to not want to kill us because they like us. I'm hoping they won't try too hard to kill us because
we can still be useful as a non-ally non-subordinate, as long as we don't OPENLY act against the cult.
Also I just don't expect the Master to act in a rush to kill Velvet. They'll likely first try to understand why we did this, EVEN if they decide to "eventually" deal with us.
I think the actual trick to the argument is that mind control is like unicorns- easy to imagine, but doesnt actually exist in reality. We have no useful moral intuitions because we don't have any examples that aren't made up. So it's one of those things, I think, where the moral choices seem obvious but aren't actually, because they are built off a whole bunch of made up assumptions about what mind control is and does.
I remember reading this hard-sci-fi story in which mind control and brainwashing ARE an actual thing, and I mostly liked what they went with.
Simply put: mind control is bad. It's sometimes better than alternatives, in the "if you're going to be an unassailable tyrant anyway and impose your will, you might as well make it so your subjects are happy instead of miserable all the time".
Also depending to the extent of brainwashing and personality alteration, it's really not different from death.
Finally, once a person has been brainwashed (if we're going with a permanent alteration kind of brainwashing), the previous person is effectively dead. If there's no way to undoing mind alteration, then the only way to go back to the previous state would effectively be to brainwash them AGAIN into being like they were before, which is AGAIN an evil act.
But yeah, supernatural persuasion and mind-control as depicted in fiction is NOT a real life thing (as far as we know), so it's pretty much impossible to put a defined border between what's fine and what's not, unless you go with a word of god "this is mind control, and this isn't".
as for my personal opinion in regard to this quest...
normal grail bonus is just really good persuasion, knowing exactly what to say
Attention of the Lores is basically nudging luck in your favour.
grail influence is much closer to that border, though it's more like "you're suddenly everyone's wettest dream and can't do nothing wrong" rather than outright mind control.
The Leash is OBVIOUSLY on the other sine of that line, being outright manipulation and control of other people's emotion
and Rarity's future state... It's PROBABLY not outright wrong/evil, as the way I see it is that the influence is giving Rarity that last push she needs to potentially try and get what she really REALLY wants.
I've seen a few players comparing this to putting ecstasy in her drink, but I don't think that's fair. I think, if anything, it's closer to getting her a bit drunk, and then having HER take the initiative (as it seems we're voting for her actions and not Velvet's here).
Nope.
There have been some thoughts as to casting a few "The End is Beautiful" rituals in return or sticking some Windigo's on the casters in return but they run into the issue that the Master can totally take us if they decide too and that might make them decide to.
if Windy's the one to attack us first we'd definitely be far beyond caring I think.
